With his fourth album Gliss Riffer released earlier this year and a European tour just started, the Baltimore electronics wizard tells Dom Smith what the gems in his record collection have given to his own musical creations

David Bowie - LowI think I started listening to this record seriously around 2011. I had heard it before and thought it was cool, but never really gave it the respect it deserved until then. It's beautifully arranged. I'd love to see sheet music if any existed. It was amazing and I like there being a, 'How did they do this?' sort of sound. This record, while I'm sure was produced top of the line, it's not like they had crazy machines that I don't understand. All the tools that they had available to them exist today. But I just kept thinking: 'What an amazing blend of instruments.' It made me think a lot more about production and the studio as a place for composing. Live is a completely different beast to the studio and I used to treat them exactly the same.

When I produced Gliss Riffer I wanted to keep it as bare bones as possible, but I always had it in the back of my head and I kept thinking, 'What should I do?'. I'm not experimental enough to be experimental, but I'm not pop enough to be pop. I'm not in either of those worlds so I'm like, 'Am I veering too far?' and then I think of that record and I'm like: 'Who gives a shit?' I just want to make the music I want to make. If the record has all of these instrumentals and abstract pieces who gives a fuck? Bowie didn't give a fuck. You got to care about the final product more than you care about how it's going to be received. I make weird music. It's weird because it's not totally weird and it's not normal. It's just in this zone and I've always existed in that zone. When you hear Low you can tell that this was made by a bunch of weirdo freaks who had an opportunity to make something amazing and they didn't squander it trying to make Beatles covers.

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